a digital scrapbook

On our second night in Rome, Ryan and I went to hang out by the Trevi fountain after dinner and generally wander the streets. We were walking down an alley when we were struck by the sight of this:

Photo taken from my iPhone

“Well this is neat,” Ryan said as he took out his camera. “Um, I think we just found the Pantheon,” I said standing awestruck. “Neat,” he replied, walking away to take photos.

Now for some history. This building is astonishingly old. It was originally built as a temple for ancient Roman gods and commissioned by the Roman statesman and general Marcus Agrippa (63 BC – 12 BC). The inscription you see above reads, “Marcus Agrippa, son of Lucius, having been consul three times, built it.” It was then rebuilt by Emperor Hadrian in 126 AD. It’s hard to fathom, say, a building that has been here for 20 centuries. And we would later return to see architecture from the inside and learn more, but here it was on our evening stroll.

On February 11, 1865, Abraham Lincoln consented to having another life mask made of him by the sculptor Clark Mills. The process began with an application of oil over Lincoln’s face, followed by the application of a thin coat of wet plaster paste that dried quickly. After fifteen minutes, Mills asked Lincoln to twitch his face, and the plaster loosened, falling off in large pieces into a cloth. The pieces were then reassembled to form the finished mask. Comparing this mask with the one done in 1860 by Leonard Volk, it is clear how great a toll the Civil War had taken on Lincoln’s health.